Final Fantasy VII vs The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past vs The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time vs Final Fantasy X 2009
Results Championship Monday, June 8th, 2009 Ulti's Analysis This was obviously the hyped cookie final, but the entire thing was over in about 5 seconds. Ocarina of Time rode a lot of circumstantial factors all the way to the championship, dominating Final Fantasy 7 in the process and becoming GameFAQs' new #1 game. Thought FF7 outperformed Ocarina of Time in every round leading up to this point, the horrendous early vote for the entire Final Fantasy series, paired with people not wanting a repeat champion and Zelda having Final Fantasy's number since the series contest all factored into a very easy Ocarina victory dance. One could blame Final Fantasy X's presence for Final Fantasy 7 losing, but Link to the Past had equal opportunity to hurt Ocarina. Fact is Ocarina won a fair fight, and Team Zelda defeated Team Final Fantasy, much like the series contest. For FF7 to have won this, it would have needed MGS4 to make the final and for LTTP to hurt Ocarina a LOT more than it did. As is, LTTP barely fazed Ocarina at all. FF7 is still leagues better than all but one game on this site, but FF as a whole gets anti-voted to holy hell in every contest, and as such always gets in a huge hole early against games of even strength. Sometimes they come back, like FFX did against MGS4 or FF the series did against Mario. But against something like Zelda that never shows any mercy in any poll, it's a death sentence. People held out hope of an FF7 comeback for hours, but it was all a pipe dream. This poll was Ocarina's victory tour from the opening bell, and the way it won so easily despite doing worse than FF7 shows how huge the play rate is of this site's most popular games. We talk about SFF and all that in pretty much every match, but the fact is a level of SFF exists in all polls with popular games in them. Ocarina of Time, you're 2009 champion! Now all we need is a third games contest being 1v1 with Ocarina and FF7 removed from the main bracket for a Tournament of Champions thing, since they're both so far ahead of everyone else. If only we could see FF7 vs Ocarina in a 1v1 setting before then... Match Trends Ngamer's Same Day Analysis Match Prediction Of course the REAL thing everyone's concerned about is Ocarina versus FF7. I said yesterday that FF was sure to win the "looked better in R5" award and I'm afraid I have to stick with that stance. 41% against the strongest MGS (yes, I'm now willing to concede that 4's extreme independence makes it the cream of the crop in this format- I'd still take 1 > 4 in a 1v1 however!) and 2nd strongest FF is incredible, especially when you consider that combined OoT and Brawl pushed for nearly 60%. But 45% of the vote against ANYONE in R5 is simply unbelievable, and frankly shouldn't even be possible. Raw percentage-wise, I'm going to give FF7 the edge heading into this Championship. Luckily there's something working in Ocarina's favor that could perhaps help balance things out- its vote trends. We all know how legendarily bad FF7 is with the early vote, and that's more or less held true here in 2009, but the classic counter used to be "no problem- it'll just rise to heaven the entire rest of the day!" Now though, not so much... yes the game still dominates like no other during the dead hours of the night, but then its been completely stagnating within an hour of the sun rising. And mostly its had no excuse- aside from Mario 64, all the games its been smashing on the top half of the bracket are old as dirt and shouldn't be stealing the "kiddie vote" from what's supposed to be the most beloved game on the site! Ocarina on the other hand has been a day vote BEAST- even last round when there was an ASV monster named Brawl hanging around OoT still kicked the competition in the teeth for the entire final 15 hours of the poll. In other words I'd be shocked if FF7 didn't lead the match from about the 4 hour mark straight through the night, and there's a good chance it even appears to have the poll salted away during that time. But I'd likewise be stunned if OoT didn't start taking huge chunks out of that least almost immediately after sunrise, and if the comeback gets serious enough to carry momentum and rally power into the ASV, this becomes Ocarina's match to lose. In summary I would favor OoT for the win ever so slightly if this were a 1v1. However as we well know its NOT (darn you SB!), meaning its time to factor in how the presence of the other two options will affect this outcome. Let's start with LttP, which I think is going to do... not a whole lot, really. Sounds weird to say this considering the game technically earned its "third strongest on the site" bragging rights this season, but, was anyone actually impressed by anything Link to the Past accomplished in '09? To me the closest it came to a "wow" moment was when it crunched stablemate LA down to the low teens, but that was a dubious accomplishment at best given how little we know about the lesser Zelda. The rallying cry for LttP against OoT has always been "a ton of people prefer 2D Zelda, and those types are diehards- they'd never betray LttP for a 3D game!" Now though I'm not so sure... haven't we always used the same "classic", "iconic", "diehard" arguments for Mario 3? Those sure don't look so hot after its 15% outing the other day. Just seems that as soon as we moved out of the 8/16 bit-only matchups recency became the driving force of the season, and I see that continuing in the title match- people are going to drop LttP when they see OoT in trouble, and they'll drop it in droves. Okay, but won't people just as easily abandon FFX if they see their beloved FF7 in trouble? I say... not necessarily. Like I was just saying, recency has played a major role in these matches (much like it always seems to do in GotY polls), and there's little doubt that X is THE RPG of the past two generations (and for many people THE GAME, period). Also, the Final Fantasy fanbase has always seemed to be much more fractured than Zelda's- this is what we used to explain the BSE result, and I think it held true when FF6 put up a better fight against 7 than we'd been expecting (alright, FF4 > FF1 was brutal, but it seems clear now that 1 operates on something like 70% franchise votes). Yes fans will jump ship to help save 7, but I just can't picture X being entirely sucked dry here as I imagine most will be predicting. In summary, even though LttP should still end up ahead of FFX in total percentage, I'm expecting X to do more to hurt its big brother's chances- Square LFF is just naturally a bigger deal than it is for Nintendo, as we've seen all year long. That combined with Ocarina's superior Day Vote and increased rally potential is enough for me to declare OoT a favorite in this Final... though only ever so slightly! Let's see those percentages. * The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time - 37.50% * Final Fantasy VII - 37.00% * The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past - 14.00% * Final Fantasy X - 11.50% Uhhh, would have liked to keep 7 closer to OoT and X a little closer to LttP but didn't have time as I was rushing out the door. Oh well, this is the right ballpark anyways. Goooo Ocarina! Next Day Review Hmm, I just don't know about this SB fellow. We tell him to run a 1v1 Contest and he ignores us, we tell him to mix the eras and he ignores us, we suggest how to improve the bracket even with 4ways and era splits in place and he ignores us. Then we ask for an epic Ocarina v FF7 Bonus Poll, and he delivers... but delays the announcement to the point where by the time the match is confirmed, the result is already a foregone conclusion! I mean I give the guy credit for coming around lately (giving us Games like we wanted, letting us replace some games with others, having us make the match pics, now this bonus poll- all nice touches), but he seems to be doomed by bad timing or bad luck or something, as even when he has good intentions things never turn out quite as well as we would hope for. External Links * Match Updates * Guru Match Predictions * Oracle Match Results • Previous Match • Next Match Category:2009 Spring Contest Matches